THE RED COLOSSUS MARTIAN METEORITE

Official meteorite name: Swayyah 005
Tested and analysed by Dr Tony Irving, University of Washington
2 145 g
16.6 × 11.5 × 9.3 cm

Provenance:
Private collection, Switzerland

‘Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than just mere gravity, it attracts the eye to the shimmering red presence in the clear night sky.’
– John Noble Wilford

Named after the Roman god of war, Mars has long been associated with warfare and mysteries. The planet’s two moons, Phobos and Deimos, were named for two of the sons of Ares and Aphrodite (the counterparts of Mars and Venus, respectively, in Greek mythology).

A Martian meteorite is a rock that formed on Mars and was ejected with a minimal speed of 3 m/s (5 km/s) from the planet by an impact event, for example from an asteroid. It then traversed interplanetary space for many hundreds of thousands of years before landing on Earth. As of May 2021, only 261 meteorites had been classified as Martian, less than half a percent of the over 70 000 meteorites that have been classified.

These meteorites are known as Martian because they have elemental and isotopic compositions that are similar to rocks and atmospheric gases on Mars, which have been measured by orbiting spacecraft, surface landers and rovers.

The majority of SNC meteorites are quite young compared to most other meteorites and seem to imply that volcanic activity was present on Mars only a few hundred million years ago. The young formation ages of Martian meteorites was one of the early-recognized characteristics that suggested their origin from a planetary body such as Mars.

The Martian specimen presented here is a true giant. At a staggering 2 145 grams, it is among the largest Martian meteorites ever found on earth and among the ten largest in private hands.